"That will happen," Wes said, philosophically, "when you invite a murderer to dine."

The doorbell rang and I ran out to see if someone had come back. Instead, I found my dear lawyer Paul at the door, surprised to see all the cars parked in the street.

"Am I intruding on a party?" he asked, hesitant.

"Not at all," I said. "Come right in."

I showed him to the dining room where Wes and Holly had just finished clearing up the dishes.

"Paul," I said, trying once more to be the hostess. "Would you care for a piece of cake?"

"Maybe later, Madeline. I'm too worked up right now. I just got back from downtown. Those poor bastards never knew what hit them."

"What poor bastards?" Holly asked.

"The law. The cops."

"What hit them?" I asked.

"Me," Paul said, proud of himself. "I'm hitting them on every single charge they are holding Albert Nbutu on. The INS, I hope to stop cold. Mr. Nbutu is a political refugee seeking asylum in the United States."

"Are they buying that?" asked Wesley, pouring cups of coffee.

"Actually, I don't think he will have a leg to stand on. The government of his country is much more stable than ever before. But this is a war of inches. They have to check it out, and while the paperwork gets filed, they cannot deport Albert."

"But they'll keep him locked up," Wes said, worried. "I don't know how he will be able to stand that."

"What about the possession of stolen property charge?" I asked, sitting down at the table.

"Says he found those items," Paul explained. "And since there is no one claiming those items were stolen, I'm telling them they have to let him go. Of course they aren't ready to listen to me yet, but when we get before a judge I'm going to dazzle them."

"But poor Albert stays locked up. Do you think that could be true?" Holly wondered. "Did he just find that stuff? I mean, if Sara Silver killed Vivian, how did this Albert guy get Vivian's jeweled lighter and lipstick?"

"I believe my client," Paul said, with a bit of bluster.

"So do I," I agreed. They all looked at me. "I think Sara followed Vivian outside, where Vivian was taking a break. She was smoking a cigarette and Sara started a conversation. That's when, I'm afraid, Vivian mentioned she knew who Sara's real father was. Sara had been thinking about how she might get her hands on the rough emeralds she knew Vivian had on her, but when Vivian began telling Sara the truth about her birth, she went totally nuts. Sara picked up something heavy, maybe one of the folding chairs that were stacked out there next to the building, and swung. I imagine Vivian went down easily. She was not very heavy. And then, perhaps because she didn't want Vivian ever to tell the story of her parentage, Sara swung again, this time breaking Vivian's neck and killing her."

"It's awful. How do you know all this?" Holly asked.

"Honnett told me they got to the rental company and found the chair they believe may have been used. They're doing tests and whatever it is they do. But mostly because of what Sara said at dinner tonight. She admitted that Vivian taunted her about her real father."

"Have you got any idea who Sara's real father was?" asked Wesley.

"Yes. I believe he is Paul's new client."

"What?" Paul stopped sipping his coffee with a jerk. "Albert? Albert Nbutu?"

"Vivian knew that Sara's mother, Gazelle Gantree, was spending time with some of the younger people who played polo at their club in Rhodesia. That fall Gazelle met a young man who worked in the stable."

"Oh my God," Holly said. "How do you know?"

"This afternoon, when I was setting up this evening's event with Honnett, he let me speak again with Albert. I told Albert I knew he traveled all the way to Los Angeles to find the daughter he had never known. Gazelle Gantree's daughter. He had spent a lifetime trying to get his life back and he desperately wanted to see this lost child.

"That's why Jack Gantree had Albert thrown in an African jail for years. After learning from Vivian that Albert Nbutu was the real father of his grandchild, Big Jack paid off some officer at the Ministry of Mines all those years ago to arrest Albert and make him disappear."

"Holy shit." Holly was dazed.

"So how did Albert finally meet his daughter?" Wesley asked.

"Albert asked his friend, Chef Reynoso, to contact Vivian and suggest she hire Albert to work on Sara's wedding. Albert said Vivian never recognized him from the old days. But at the wedding, he approached Vivian and told her the whole story. She claimed she never knew what became of him. That she and Gazelle had been told Nbutu was killed in the fighting.

"But Albert never believed her. He remembered seeing Vivian once when he was with Gazelle in the Polo Club. He had always known that she was the one who betrayed him. After he confronted Vivian, Albert planned to tell Sara the truth."

"My goodness, Madeline," Paul said, "Albert told you all that? Today?"

"Yes. You know that old technique they call good cop-bad cop? Well, Albert had just spent last night with a pack of really bad cops, and then he got to speak with me. I think he was so traumatized by being in a cell again, locked up, that he was ready to talk to anyone."

"You underestimate yourself," Paul said, seriously.

"She always does," Wes agreed, and then turned back to the fascinating tale. "So did he tell Sara he was her father, face to face?"

"No. Vivian insisted she should be the one to tell Sara first. She was a woman, she told him, and Sara would listen because Vivian had been in Africa with her mother."

"But," Wes picked up, figuring out the logic of what must have happened, "when Vivian told Sara the African ice sculptor was really her dad, she got hysterical."

"Exactly what I think," I agreed. "Whatever her mixed-up reasoning, she'd been brought up by a racist pig who had possibly passed his prejudice down to his granddaughter. Perhaps she couldn't absorb the news that her father was black."

"That's sickening," Holly said.

"Poor Albert," Paul said.

"His whole life has been so tragic," Wes said.

"I know," I agreed. "And later, when he walked back outside to the area where he had been working, he discovered Vivian's body lying there. Dead."

"Shit!" Holly shook her head. "What a shock."

"He really didn't want to talk about this part. Maybe he figured out what had happened. Maybe he saw Sara walking away from the area. He wouldn't say yes or no to that. He's still protecting her."

"So is he the one who moved the body?" Wes asked.

"Yes. He was scared to death. He didn't want the body to be found, especially so close to his work area, so he carried Vivian's body out to the foyer while all the guests were busy dining in the closed Hall of Small Mammals."

"But why toss her onto the Triceratops?" Holly asked.

"In Rhodesia, they have a custom of displaying the bodies of those who have been executed. In public. Hung on a stake. In the town square. As a warning to others."

"So you think Albert Nbutu was applying that quaint custom to Vivian?"

"I do. And when he moved her body, he discovered a tube of lipstick and a jeweled lighter."

"The lighter was Vivian's. That makes sense," Paul said, figuring out how this might impact his client. "But he could have found it any time after the body was moved, Maddie. There's no evidence to the contrary."

"Not that the police have, no," I agreed. "But the lipstick is another matter. That shade of MAC lipstick was never worn by Vivian Duncan. She was a Chanel addict down to her makeup. That MAC lipstick belonged to the bride, Sara Silver."

"Holy cow," Holly said, "I'm sure you're right!"

"And when I mentioned that to Honnett this afternoon, he checked it out. They won't be able to connect that exact tube of lipstick to Sara, but that is the same shade she buys. They're convinced it was hers. And if they can make a deal with Paul here, I believe they are prepared to allow Albert to walk out of that cell if he'll testify he found the lipstick underneath the body. And they may even deal on the INS issue."

"This is too good!" Paul said, relishing the thought. "The police asking our permission to let our man go. Well, I gotta run, children. I'm on my way to make Albert Nbutu a free man."

Paul kissed Holly and me on the tops of our heads and left.

Holly and Wesley stood up, too.

"Where are you guys going?" I asked. I was high on getting answers and didn't want to be left alone.

"I'm going to put this beautiful cake away," Wes said, ever the fastidious one. "Whipped cream frosting, you know, needs to be kept cool."

"I'm going to make a phone call," Holly said, moving towards her desk in the entryway.

"Who are you calling at this hour?" I asked.

"My dad. I suddenly miss him a whole lot."

Chapter 27.

A week had come and gone, allowing all the events fit to print, to be printed. The arrest for murder of the ward of one of T.V.'s favorite oldies was custom made for L.A. T.V. news, so we had little trouble keeping up on Sara Silver's arrest and confession. Or on the revelation to the press that poor Sara had been addicted to prescription painkillers and was requesting permission to attend a detox clinic before her trial.

Maneuvering, Paul had called it. If Sara had claimed she was addicted to hummingbird wings, Paul would have found it more believable. He could be so cynical, sometimes. And for very good reason. Sara was working on her case the way rich lawyers advise, spinning some tale to take the heat off her selfish, foolish self.

We sat around the living room downstairs, Wes, Holly and I, recapping the events, since so much had been resolved in one short week. Paul Epstein would soon be joining us to announce the third final settlement agreement he'd hammered out with Five Star. So we were fairly apprehensive.

"Oh Maddie, tell Wes what we found out about that car-jacking thing," Holly prompted me.

"Oh, yes. Remember when I first met Vivian?"

"No," Wes said, deadpan. "Of course I do. Who did the car-jacking, anyway?"

"She was never car-jacked, really."

"What?"

"That's right. When Ralph Duncan was talking to the police, he admitted that he and Vivian had been quarreling that day and she had insisted he get out of the car and find his own way home."

"So he stole her car?"

"Well, not exactly. But they did start scuffling, I guess. He said he drove off in a hurry."

"I'll say. Didn't he barely miss you?" Wes asked. "What are these people thinking?"

"Yes, but because she was Vivian Duncan, she manufactured a whole song and dance about car-jackers. How do you like that? It was a much more glamorous story than that she had finally pissed off her poor husband to the point where he had shoved her down onto the pavement, trying to get into the car and get home."

"She was fairly clever at spinning tales," Wes said.

"Which didn't end up winning her any contests," Holly commented.

We all shook our heads.

"Madeline, I talked to Beryl Duncan this morning," Wes said.

"You did?"

"I was wondering how Esmeralda was doing. We had sort of bonded, you know."

Wes was a real dog person. I understood he had become attached.

"She said her father was doing okay. He is selling the house, he decided. It seems too big for him and Esme now that Vivian is no longer there to fill it up. And Beryl was pretty excited, really. She had just closed that Kip England divorce settlement she'd been working on."

"That's right," I said, recalling how worked up she had been over it. "She represented the wife."

"So you'll love this," Wes said. "She got Kip England to give his ex 20 million dollars."

Holly whistled. "That's my dream amount of money," she said.

I looked at her. "You have a dream amount of money?"

"Sure. You know, if you had that much you'd never worry about money again. That sort of thing. What about you, Mad. What's your dream amount of money?"

"I don't know," I said. "I think maybe it's not too good to get too comfortable."

"Glad you said that," Paul said, entering the room. "Hi Maddie, hi guys."

"Paul! What's happening already? We're going nuts. What does Five Star want from us?"

"Your bank statement, for a start."

"I beg your pardon," Wesley said.

"Here's the deal, kids. We take it or leave it. It's totally up to you. Five Star understands that you have had expenses this year. They are willing to sell you back your company..."